After graduating in 1993 from the University of Adelaide with a BA degree in Educational Theatre, Fiona co-founded performance company, Safe Chamber, with Jason Sweeney. The works produced by Safe Chamber were group devised pieces incorporating a process of rigorous research, writing,and development of audience-interaction concepts for creating a live experience in which the spectator was active witness and participant. Fiona began writing and performing monologues as part of her work with Safe Chamber and then embarked upon an independent career as a soloist writer-performer.
After performing her first major solo show in 1996, for Brand X Theatre, (Partly it’s about love, partly it’s about massacre.), she moved into working exclusively as a /writer for other performers/companies and has enjoyed a moderately successful national and international career, which continues today. Her work has been produced in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, the UK repeatedly, New York (fringe), Bulgaria (Sofia, National Theatre), and will be produced in Brazil, and Canada during 2009/10.
Her other key area of work is with young people, through youth theatre companies, and with professional companies producing work for young audiences, such as SA based Budgie Lung Theatre Company, Urban Myth, DFaces (Whyhalla), and Southern Youth Theatre Ensemble.
Outside her artistic practice (concurrent to it), she has spent four years (2003-2007) working for the Australia Council for the Arts, initially as a Youth Officer for the Theatre Board, and the Community Cultural Development Board, then as a Research Officer on projects and policies related to young people, arts and education. This work provided her with a solid grounding in research practices, and policy-making processes within government organisations. Previously she has worked as a Project Officer for The Box Factory Community Centre, in Adelaide (1995). Whilst the experience has been invaluable, she is now determined to pursue her writing, artistic and research practice full-time.
She completed her Master of Creative Arts in 2009, on the topic Single Girls and Serial Killers: Sex, Slaughter and the City. From this material Unreasonable Adults worked up a range of performed “essays”, one of which was commissioned by Robert Pacitti (the Pacitti Company) for the inaugural SPILL Festival of Contemporary Performance, in London, 2007. Outcomes of this project include short essays, a blog commentary on creative process, short films, as well as an ever-evolving live presentation. She is particularly interested in the form/s of lecture-performance.
She now works with Jason Sweeney with whom she explores the construction of creative material based upon interpretation of research, and theoretical texts, or critical ideas. Her work is focussed primarily around her research projects, and the idea of translating inter-disciplinary approaches to research and presentation of theoretical material creative formats. The most recent work in progress is If Not For You Then Who: essays on fear and desire. This is a long-term creative development project, in which we are using the web environment as our primary “creative laboratory”.
In 2010 onwards she will be enrolled in a PhD program at Flinders University Law School and Drama Department working on an interdisciplinary project: Murder Cities. Navigating the Abyss. One of the creative outcomes of this project will be an experimental film (or web-based television series) in collaboration with Jason Sweeney.